As Donald Trump’s crackdown on elite institutions continues, there are growing calls for other Ivy League schools to attempt to resist, despite?Columbia University’s perceived capitulation.
The White House has been attacking top US universities financially for a range of perceived offences, including failing to prevent antisemitism, trans rights policies and climate change courses – as well deporting students involved in pro-Palestinian protests.
Most recently, it has frozen more than $1 billion (?770 million) in federal funding at Cornell University and $790 million at Northwestern University – after similar actions against Harvard University and Princeton University.
In response, Harvard has from Wall Street and Princeton has sold $320 to protect itself.
Chris Dietrich, chair of the history department at Fordham University, told Times Higher Education that these strategies are not “fighting back” so much as bracing for impact as a form of “managed compliance”.
“It is frustrating but not surprising that Ivy League schools seem more prone to playing defence with an abacus than using their influence to take a public stand for due process or academic freedom.”
Colleges are wary of defying the White House over immigration raids for fear of being targeted next, scholars have said. Columbia, the first to fall foul of Trump’s ire, provoked outrage across the sector by giving in to various demands to restore $400 million in funding.
“Columbia’s capitulation to the federal government’s unlawful, bad-faith demands is catastrophic for the future of higher education and scientific research in the United States,” said Kirsten Weld, professor of history at Harvard and president of the faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
“Harvard must not follow Columbia down that dark and shameful path.”
Instead, she has joined in calling for her institution to “aggressively contest the Trump administration’s attempted shakedown in court”.
“If the wealthiest and best-resourced institution in world history cannot stand up and lead a defence of our sector’s core values and indispensable contributions to society, then who will?” she asked.?
The AAUP filed a lawsuit challenging the deportation of students a few weeks ago, and the Presidents’ Alliance, a group of college leaders, ?However, few of the top universities have joined in.?
– who accused Harvard and Columbia of “losing their souls” and sacrificing international respect by caving to an “authoritarian president” – and former president Barack Obama.
Obama advised universities to lean on their vast endowments – which dwarf Trump’s threatened cuts in some cases – to resist pressure, that they will only do this as a “last resort”.
Another route could be collective action. Dietrich said leaders are missing an opportunity to use their intellectual leadership to “morally defend the right to dissent”.
“They are not challenging the political assault on universities and the fundamental values of open enquiry or academic freedom, they are managing it.
“If universities act together in a sort of mutual defence pact, they can push back. A coalition would be much harder to ignore.”
He was supportive of a . The Mutual Defense Compact proposal calls for a coalition of 18 universities to commit to a shared fund to provide “immediate and strategic support to any member institution under direct political or legal infringement”.
Norman Finkelstein, an independent political scientist and expert on the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is critical of what he describes as the “most brazen outrageous assault on academic freedom” in US history.
But though it has escalated under Trump, he said it began with the demands from rich donors to clamp down on the pro-Palestinian movement under President Biden.
Finkelstein accused of Columbia of a “pitiful” capitulation akin to the McCarthy era, but suggested another way for universities, particularly the likes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or California Institute of Technology, to take the fight to Trump.
He called for universities to refuse to conduct any more defence research until academic freedom is restored.
“The government can’t replace them with scabs. They can’t replace them with foreign labour.
“The universities, which in many cases are adjuncts of the Defense Department, have strategic leverage to fight back.”
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